CAMO doctors have many patients to tend

Sunday

Feb 27, 2011 at 4:06 AM

By JUNE CHANDLER-WHITE

Special to The Daily Record

SANTA ROSA DE COPAN, HONDURAS -- It is hard to keep up when Dr. Les Mohler makes rounds.

"When we come to the ward, we'd like to be able to communicate with the nurse, but they are usually very busy. So we like to try and find the charts, but they are probably with the nurse," said Dr. Linda Camp, a plastic surgeon from Waterloo, Ill., who accompanied Mohler as he made his Friday morning rounds.

Busy nurses, and the fact that Mohler and Camp are due in surgery in minutes, mean that when Mohler and Camp check in with their post-surgical patients, they have to remember a lot from the previous days.

"We did him two days ago," surgical nurse Katie Simmons reminds Mohler as he reaches the bed of a boy who had surgery to close a cleft in his palate.

"If he's taking fluids all right, it will be OK for him to go home, and follow-up Monday," Mohler says.

He reaches the bed of a little girl who had surgery on her ear earlier in the week.

"The drain can come out today. If you want to use the pump today, you can lose the drain tomorrow," he says.

A slower walk through the room later in the day allows time to learn the stories behind what's brought these young patients to doctors Mohler and Camp.

There's 10-year-old Gerson Lopez, who suffered from severe scarring and disfigurement from a skin infection that went undiagnosed since the boy was 4.

Thursday, Gerson was recovering in the pediatrics ward from surgery, with his uncle, Augustin Miguel Lopez, at his bedside.

Through an interpreter, the boy says he is looking forward to going back to school and especially going home. The family lives in San Miguel, Lempira, a six-hour journey by bus each way. The boy's father, a sustenance farmer, had to return home earlier in the week.

"I saw his father just a few days ago. He had to leave because he was not sleeping and was very tired," said interpreter Annie Robles. She explained that at night, family members sleep on the floor of the pediatric ward or in the outdoor courtyard in order to be near their sick children.

In a nearby bed, 6-year-old Mario Antonio Lara recuperates from surgery he had Thursday to repair a bilateral cleft lip. His mother, Rosa Juila Lara, stands at his bedside.

Rosa Lara says through an interpreter she has no job and no husband. She relies on her older grown children for support. Honduras has no welfare program, no food stamps and no government-funded health insurance for children.

"(Lara) prayed to God that (her youngest child) could get attention," Robles said. When the CAMO teams come to town, people bring their sick children, with no guarantee they will be seen.

Mario was slated to be discharged from the hospital Saturday.

"Thank God, and thank the (CAMO) brigade. Thank God for all of this," Lara said through Robles.

It seems any random bed holds a child who has been helped by CAMO, with a story that is sad and shocking to people outside of Honduras. Lack of resources are just a fact of life here, Robles said.

Adela Bojorquez is a 1-year-old, but appears much younger. She suffers from microcephaly and neurological problems. Her mother abandoned her at the hospital when she was 10 days old; her grandmother, Cristina Lemuo, has stayed in the hospital multiple times with the baby, who now has pneumonia.

"One time, (Lemuo) stayed in the hospital (with her granddaughter) for 20 days with one dress," Robles relates.

Two-year-old Kevin Jose Lopez rode to the hospital by bus in his mother Roxana Rodriguez's arms, screaming and crying after he tripped on a stone and fell into the fire on which his mother was cooking. The mother and child live in Cucuyagua, Copan, about an hour and a half away by bus.

"In these villages this is so, so typical," Robles said of the area's high number of burn injuries. "That's what happens. The lady is cooking, the kids are there, and accidents happen."

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